Anybody with money to spend is going to be astute enough to realise that the burden of self-hosting is far above any potential direct cost savings, and so self-hosting becomes an option utilised only by those who probably wouldn’t be going to pay for it anyway. Essentially, it’s a pain-in-the-ass free tier.
If it’s going to be utilized almost exclusively by those who wouldn’t pay anyway, then as a business there is no loss of revenue by providing an open-source version.
And although this company may not want to or be able to afford to spend much making it easy, I’ve used one piece of software that the business goes to great lengths to make easy to self-host.
My phrasing must be bad because you've just said exactly what I was trying to say. I certainly don't intend to frame it as a bad choice, I think it's a great choice, I was addressing why offering open-source does not cannibalise paid customers and why it can be a sensible business decision: people who would choose to self-host aren't going to pay anyway.
Maybe "pain-in-the-ass free tier" was unclear, I mean from the perspective of a customer: it's such a pain in the ass to get the product for free that it makes sense to pay for it for almost everyone.
